


The Halfa Maxim

by Alexa_Piper



Series: The Notebook - Unrelated Danny Phantom Oneshots from 2013 to 2019 [13]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Did I use that relationship tag right? Danny and Vlad as allies. No romance., Gen, I feel like the date is wrong, I think it was actually January 2015 but it's too long ago for me to remember now, Identity Reveal, backdated fic, fanon-typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-06
Updated: 2015-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:15:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27211090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexa_Piper/pseuds/Alexa_Piper
Summary: Even the most mediocre haunting can change your entire life if you're not careful.
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Vlad Masters
Series: The Notebook - Unrelated Danny Phantom Oneshots from 2013 to 2019 [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1986457
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	The Halfa Maxim

It was a dark, hot, uncomfortable night.

The air was muggy, foully sticking in your throat with every stagnant breath. Clouds crouched above in a thick blanket that blocked out any trace of celestial light.

Somewhere not too far away, a cat wailed.

Keeping one hand pressed firmly against his side, Danny swooped from the sky to phase directly through the roof of Vlad's Wisconsin mansion. In contrast to the mugginess of outside, the interior of the building was deliciously cool. Landing with a stumble, Danny leaned heavily against the wall of the hallway as twin rings of light swept away his ghostly appearance.

Vlad could be anywhere in this stupidly large building, and a mixture of blood and ectoplasm was seeping steadily through the fingers that were clamped over Danny's gut. Drops already spotted the stone beneath his feet, and the halfa slid down the wall until his backside hit the ground. Classical music wafted through the building, so shouting for help would most likely do nothing more than waste breath.

Screw trying to find Vlad. Danny had already flown this far – the fruitloop could do the rest. Sending out a pulse of power that was sure to leave Vlad's ghost sense tingling for hours to come, the teen hissed in pain, curling around his injury.

"Use the door for once in your life!" The shout was faint but recognisable, and a moment later the music cut off. Pressure, strong and dark and undoubtedly familiar, pressed against Danny's core as air colder than ice seeped from the teenager's lungs.

"Doors are for people with no imagination," Danny wheezed as Vlad appeared before him.

"I have a perfectly good door knocker," the elder halfa sneered. "Perhaps a week of involuntary possession of that might help you to appreciate its use."

Despite being almost certain that Vlad wouldn't actually go through with such a threat, Danny couldn't suppress a shudder; being stuck inside an inanimate object was not an experience he wished to repeat. Clutching tighter at his side, the teen swallowed thickly.

"Daniel," Vlad sighed, " _why_ are you bleeding on my floor?"

Leaning his head back against the wall, Danny sucked in as deep a breath as he could. "I came to warn you," he rasped. Damn, he was really getting dizzy now. Maybe flying all the way to Wisconsin without stopping for stitches hadn't been such a good idea.

"Can you stand?" Vlad didn't move to help his uninvited guest, and Danny clenched his teeth before trying to push himself up from where he was slumped against the rough stone wall. He slid right back onto the floor without making much headway at all, gasping as sweat dripped into his eyes.

"It doesn't matter if I can get up or not. We're in danger!"

Vlad sighed, flicking a finger in the direction of the teen. Danny yelped in surprise as his body was encased in a thin veil of pink light that lifted him effortlessly off the ground, glaring at his suddenly red-eyed host.

"Put me down," he hissed because he had no strength to produce a more commanding tone.

Vlad simply walked down the hallway, the telekinetically-suspended Danny floating along beside him.

"You're not listening to me!" Danny choked, struggling to break free of Vlad's hold over him. All his efforts succeeded in doing was reopening the partially closed wound, sending a stronger flow of red and green over the boy's white-knuckled fingers.

"Be still," Vlad commanded, turning through the door into the kitchen. The light deposited Danny on the clean marble bench, and the teen whimpered as he untangled his gangly limbs.

"Vlad-"

"Now let's see what they've done to you," the man murmured, placing an extensive first aid kit beside his guest.

Danny peeled his fingers away from the wound, flinching as Vlad phased off the bloodstained t-shirt and rolled up the sleeves of his own white button-down. "It'll need stitches, right?"

"No," Vlad responded. "This is a burn from an ectoblast of considerable power – the wound is far too wide for stitches."

"Well, it's not like you can do a graft," Danny said, redirecting his gaze to the ceiling. A crack spider webbed across the plaster above the sink, and he fixed his eyes determinedly on this irregularity.

"No," Vlad mused, "but there are other ways to cover such wounds."

"Yeah, you do that," the ghost boy mumbled, continuing to stare at the ceiling. He wasn't going to look down, because looking down meant catching another glimpse of the contents of Vlad's hospital-grade kit. Just one look at those needles and pills had sent chills down Danny's spine, and previous panicked outbursts halfway through receiving first aid had taught him that it was simply better to not look.

Vlad's warm hands skimmed over the boy's chest, applying pressure to every rib. "Nothing's broken there," he announced.

Something rustled with the crinkle of plastic, and Danny screwed his eyes shut before they could dart downwards. "Just hurry up and stop the bleeding," he begged.

Vlad sighed, and a moment later something cool and wet touched the open flesh, sending fire through Danny's side. "I'm just disinfecting it," he said, his free hand clamping down on the boy's shoulder to hold him in place as Danny jolted with a surprised cry.

"Warn a guy next time," Danny gasped, curling his fingers over the edge of the bench and holding on as tightly as he could.

"Daniel," Vlad said gently, "can I try something new on this burn?"

Danny cracked an eye at the unusual tone of voice, noting the tub of glowing ointment before shutting his eyelids again. "What is it?"

"A potent ectoplasmic ointment," Vlad said. "I have used it myself, and it should heal an injury such as yours within moments. I am sure you understand that this eliminates infection, and you'll be back on your feet faster than it takes to microwave popcorn."

"What's the catch?" the boy grunted, holding as still as he could as warm liquid trickled from the wound and slipped beneath the waistband of ill-fitting jeans.

"The pain is considerable," Vlad admitted, "but surely you understand the positives of such a fast healing process."

"So what, you're testing it on me to see if it works the same for different cores?"

"I am," he responded.

Danny forced himself to breathe deeply through his nose, counting to five for each inhale and exhale. "Alright," he said after a few calming breaths, "I guess that no needles is a positive. Just get on with it, would you?"

"Here's your warning," Vlad murmured, and Danny held himself as still as possible as the cream was smeared across his wound.

Agony licked across his side like a brand. His body stiffened, and Danny arched his back, shrieking. The marble bench cracked beneath his superhuman fingers, breaking away from the edge in chunks.

Within a matter of heartbeats, the pain ebbed to a dull throb which slowly began to bleed into nothing more than the slight sensitivity of new skin.

"You can open your eyes now," Vlad said, amusement clear in his voice.

The first aid kit audibly clicked closed, and Danny blinked away tears that he didn't even realise he'd shed. He unpeeled his fingers from the ruined bench, sheepishly placing the broken bits beside where he sat.

He grinned at the way that Vlad's eyebrows pinched in irritation. "Sorry about that," Danny offered, automatically running a hand over the new skin of his healed wound. "Hey, that worked great!"

The man sighed, returning the kit to its place in one of the cupboards. "Perhaps you could get off my bench before you damage it further." He yanked open the fridge door, removing a bottle or ectoplasm that he handed to the boy.

Danny made no move to do as Vlad had asked. "Uh, does that healing cream stuff work on other types of injuries?"

"Only open wounds." The elder halfa turned back towards his guest, eyes roving over Danny's form in an attempt to identify whatever other grievance the boy was insinuating he had. "Where else are you hurt?"

The teen held out his left leg. "I'm pretty sure it's broken." Uncapping the bottle, he took a long swig of its glowing contents, sighing in contentment as the fuzziness left his thoughts.

Vlad ran a hand through his hair, messing up the perfectly smooth ponytail in an exasperated gesture before kneeling in front of the boy and phasing off Danny's sneaker and sock.

Danny glanced down, getting his first look at an ankle that was red and swollen and definitely bent at an impossible angle. "Can you set it?" he asked.

"What am I, a doctor?" Vlad demanded. "No, I cannot. By the time a doctor will look at it in the morning, the bones will have already begun to fuse thanks to your spectral healing."

"So they'll have to re-break it," Danny grumbled.

The elder sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "There's another alternative," he admitted, "but I do not think that you're going to enjoy it."

"Whatever," Danny snapped. "We've got a real problem on our hands anyway. My foot can wait."

"I suppose this 'real problem' is the reason you turned up at my house in the middle of the night bleeding and unable to stand up?"

Danny scowled at the back of Vlad's head as the man returned to the fridge. "Yes," he ground through teeth clenched in irritation. "You could at least pay attention, since I came all this way to warn you!"

"My apologies," Vlad said, turning back to his guest with an infuriating smile. "I'm listening."

"No you're not, you're making drinks," Danny spat.

"It's called multitasking, my dear boy. Something that you clearly haven't mastered if you still fail to fly and dodge ectoblasts simultaneously."

The teen clenched his teeth in frustration but decided that arguing with Vlad wasn't worth the trouble right now. "They found out," he admitted, something cold squeezing his heart at the recollection of their expressions. "I was cleaning up a regular haunting down at a nursing home when the Guys in White turned up. Mum and Dad… they were there as well. And Val, too." He took another mouthful of ectoplasm, fighting down the tightness in his throat. "Someone shot me, I'm not really sure who, and the blast knocked me straight through a wall. I guess that's how my ankle broke." Danny swallowed again, blinking through the blur of tears. He felt sick, like hands grasped at his gut, his heart, his throat, squeezing relentlessly. It hurt.

"I… changed…

"I changed back. With everyone there. And their faces…"

Danny's resolve slipped and he clapped both hands over his own face, sobbing helplessly.

He heard Vlad's small sigh. "Oh, Badger…"

A warm hand clasped onto Danny's shoulder, and there it stayed as the undead superhuman teenager wept with all the vulnerability and feeling of plain old human Danny Fenton.

"So you ran away," he said once Danny's sobs had quieted.

The boy nodded, taking the tissue Vlad handed him to wipe away snot and tears. "Yeah," he croaked. "I didn't know who else could help me, but they'll track me, they'll find us. They'll figure out how I became this, and realise your portal accident did the same thing!"

Vlad moved back to the assortment of glasses and bottles that he had assembled before Danny's meltdown. "We're perfectly safe here," he said.

"They'll find us!" Danny insisted, panic rising and pushing past his grief.

"They found me long before you even existed, and they wouldn't _dare_ enter the property," Vlad responded as nonchalantly as telling someone the date. "Now you should probably call your mother – she's phoned me several times in the past hour."

Danny shook his head, twisting the hem of his shirt through his fingers. The thought of telephoning his mother, after what had happened at the nursing home…

He'd tried so _hard_ to stay in ghost form, but the shock from the hit had sent his head spinning. Ecto-countering energy, courtesy of the gun that had shot him, fizzed through his body in spasms that sank into his core, and before Danny could gather the energy or even the thought to teleport away or turn invisible or do _something_ to hide, he'd been forced back into the plane of the living.

The Red Huntress had stood as still as a tree in a light breeze, body tense and the gun in her hand trembling like slightly ruffled leaves.

The Guys in White hadn't seemed too surprised; their stances remained the same, weapons still pointed in the general direction of the ghost-boy-turned-human, lazy smiles creeping across their faces like a tear in your jeans that gets worse with every movement.

The hunters in blue and orange. Maddie and Jack. Mum and Dad.

Danny had looked straight to them, and they had stared straight back.

Jack had moved first, stepping towards his terrified child that lay panting and bleeding in a pile of rubble. And Danny had flinched. He'd _flinched._ Because his father moved towards him.

The way Jack's face froze, like a person who'd just been slapped completely unexpectedly, and the way the big man stopped as surely as if someone had just slammed their foot on the brakes, was so unexpected that even through Danny's utter panic he'd still felt a stab of guilt. The power was already seeping back into his limbs, whispering that it was okay, he could flee any time he wanted.

_Danny…_ His head swung around at his mother's whisper, but the halfa had been unable to see anything beyond the visored hood of her hazmat suit.

One of the agents had moved, stepping forwards in much the same way that Jack had.

The sight of the bulky man coming closer, the same ectogun that had fired only moments earlier now pointed at Danny's head, was more than Danny could take. Any reason evaporated from his thoughts, leaving the halfa's mind to be overtaken by panic.

He didn't see his mother use her extensive martial arts training to throw the agent halfway across the room before elbowing the other in the face with a sickening, satisfying crack. Nor did he see Jack fling his own gun to the ground, or that Valerie had sunk to her knees on the filthy carpet.

At the first movement of that man dressed in impractical, immaculate white, Danny had done the only thing he could to ensure his continued survival.

He had fled…

"Daniel," Vlad said quietly, firmly. Commanding.

Danny swallowed thickly. "I really don't think-"

"Your parents have been aware of my halfa status since the day I became one," Vlad interrupted, not even looking at the teen. He poured drinks carefully, mixing one mug of incredibly black coffee, while a tumbler on the tray beside it was filled with ice and something that looked like apple juice but smelled vastly different. "The Guys in White found me in the hospital before the doctors had even had time to insert an intravenous drip. They brought your parents in as well, and questioned us all.

"Right in the middle of it all, I managed to phase through the bed."

Danny idly kicked his good leg, feeling tension begin to bleed out of his limbs as Vlad continued to speak. The idea was ludicrous. Ridiculous. There were so many inconsistencies between what Vlad was saying and what Danny had grown up knowing.

But if what Vlad said was the truth, then maybe there wasn't any reason to be afraid.

Vlad's expression relaxed into a smile. "At first, it looked like I was going to be locked away forever, but it only took me about a month to be strong enough to break out. Even back then, I was a persuasive man. I knew how to get what I wanted from people. When the Guys in White caught up with me again, I knew exactly how to frighten them enough that they would never dare attempt locking me up again."

Danny pictured those big men with their guns and tasers and all sorts of other devices designed to contain and cause pain. "How'd you do that?"

Vlad's grin widened, eyes burning like a sunset over the desert. "We have _ghost powers,_ " he reminded the teen. "There's nothing that those men are more afraid of than being at the receiving end of attacks from a furious, powerful ghost.

"Don't ever forget how powerful you are, Badger."

Danny shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not like that," he murmured.

"You don't think you're strong?"

"No!" the boy blurted, feeling power crackle through him with this surge in emotion. His refection in the darkened window over the sink showed eyes and freckles that glowed as green as an ectoblast. "I'm just not… I can't threaten people like that." His glowing had already begun to dim again, but Danny watched his refection in morbid fascination. How many times had he done this in front of people? Sam and Tucker? He looked pretty damned threatening. Why were they never afraid?

"I hope you never find yourself in a situation where you have to," Vlad said, screwing the cap back onto a bottle of lemonade. "You are much too hesitant. All you need to do, Daniel, is be _confident._ I've already cowed those idiots – it's now up to you to simply convince them that you're too far out of their league for them to even consider hunting."

Danny's leg stopped kicking. That might just work. If he could pull it off, then Vlad's crazy idea could be exactly what he needed to go on living his life uninterrupted by incarceration and experimentation. "How do I do that?" he breathed.

"Call your mother," Vlad said again. "After you have spoken to her, we can go and get your leg fixed and sort out those agents."

Danny hopped off the bench, hovering just above the white marble tiles so as not to put any weight on his damaged limb. Sniffing, he wiped his nose again and accepted the mobile that Vlad held out.

Floating out into the hallway, Danny could at least pretend that he had some modicum of privacy. Vlad's superhuman hearing would be able to identify everything that Danny said through the walls and closed door, but the ghost boy much preferred being out of the man's line of sight to make this call.

Vlad's phone was sleek and black, one of those new iPhones that had Tucker salivating enviously whenever he saw Kwan's. Danny unlocked it with the passcode – a four-digit combination representing his name. Daniel James (Phantom) Fenton. 3573.

It was one of the many strange things that had cropped up as Danny's truce with Vlad had bled into the dangerous territory of friendship. At first, Danny had questioned Vlad relentlessly about the passcode, but after nothing but teasing insults from the other halfa, he'd dropped the subject.

Vlad's phone sat in the palm of his hand, and Danny took a shaky breath, his throat still a little tight and his eyelashes still wet from the recent tears. He typed in his mother's number, pausing as his thumb hovered just short of touching the call symbol.

Danny's leg throbbed with a consistent, pounding pain. He couldn't put this off any longer, or the bones would begin to fuse incorrectly.

He pressed call, and held the phone up to his ear somewhat gingerly.

Down the line, his mother's telephone began to ring.

One second.

Two.

Thr-

She picked up before the second ring even had the chance to start. "Did you find him?!"

Danny bit down on his lip as his mother's hysterical shriek made him jump in surprise. Immediately, his tongue was met with the tang of blood and ectoplasm.

Flinching, the teen licked the split flesh, his throat tightening like a balloon filled to capacity – no space for more air, no chance of words. He opened his mouth, but nothing passed stinging lips but a trickle of red and green that slid down his chin and dripped onto his filthy shirt.

"Vlad?" Maddie said, her voice somewhat lower but still… raspy? A sob filtered down from her end of the line, driving a cold sliver of pain into Danny's chest.

That small, anguished sound coming from his mother of all people gave Danny the strength the swallow down the boulder that seemed to have lodged itself against his larynx. "It's me," he choked.

"Danny?" she breathed.

Danny dabbed at his chin and mouth with the back of his hand. "Yeah," he murmured. "I'm safe."

She sobbed again, the sound a sharp staccato that brought new tears to Danny's own eyes. "You're at Vlad's?"

"Mhm." Tearing the torn, trailing hem from one side of his shirt, the ghost boy blotted the flow from his lip. "He's patched me up, more or less."

"Right." A sigh crackled into Danny's ear, and the halfa immediately tensed when she said "Daniel Fenton" in a much firmer, more familiar tone.

Oh, _hell._

"You are _never_ to do that again!" Maddie shouted, her voice coming so loudly through the speakers that Danny knew Vlad would have easily heard her through the stone wall. A moment later, the teen picked up the undeniable sound of his host chuckling.

"You'll have to be more specific," Danny said. Maybe she wasn't angry, maybe he'd just scared her. Her reaction to his comment would be all he needed to figure out her mood and manoeuver himself back into safe waters. "Never go ghost hunting again? Never use Vlad's phone to call you? Never wear the same jeans for five days without washing them?"

"Don't be smart with me, young man! You're in more trouble than you can imagine!"

Right. So she was pissed.

"Do you have _any_ idea how worried your father and I have been?! We thought the Guys in White caught you, or that you'd passed out somewhere all alone when we couldn't find you at Sam or Tucker's!"

"So you called Vlad."

"Don't you use that tone of voice with me," Maddie snapped. "We called Vlad because we knew that he's… like you… a-and that you might go to him for help."

"Well, what did you actually tell him?" Danny asked, using the cleanest corner of his makeshift handkerchief to dab again at the clotting wound. "'Cause he certainly seemed surprised when he saw how hurt I was."

He would ignore that hiccup in her last comment. It could be addressed later, once everyone had had some more time to think things over.

"I told him you ran away," Maddie responded. "Now, enough questions. Come home."

Danny groaned; he knew that tone all too well. "I'm grounded, aren't I?"

"Come. Home."

"Can't," he chirped. "I don't have to energy to fly home tonight, and Vlad still has to fix my busted ankle anyway."

"Danny-" Her voice was low, threatening.

"Besides, I'm _floating,_ " Danny quipped, "like, right now. I can _fly,_ Mum. You literally can't ground me."

"I'm sure your father and I can arrange to keep your powerless for the duration of your punishment," Maddie responded.

Danny's core constricted in cold fear. "Alright, alright, I'll come home tomorrow," he said. "Just don't… don't do that. Don't touch my core."

"We'll discuss it when you get home."

"It's really sensitive and can be hurt badly without much effort," Danny blurted. He may as well put everything out there, every detail of his secret. Anything to stop his parents from damaging something that potentially might never heal.

Maddie was silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her words were surprisingly gentle, and Danny realised how frightened he'd just sounded. "Is there anything else, Sweetie?"

The words came tumbling out faster that Danny thought himself capable of talking, like grains of rice from a split sack. "I need to drink filtered ectoplasm, or I'll burn out. I eat a lot more food than normal – at least three times the usual amount. My core turns most of it into spectral energy so unless I eat a lot I'm not feeding my human body. That ghost-proof stuff you put into our food makes me really sick, so that's why I haven't been eating much at home for the past few years. Sam and Tucker help me out and feed me as much as they can, but I also spend pretty much all of my allowance on food.

"Lately I've had a bit of trouble knowing when I'm speaking English and when I'm talking in the language of the dead. My injuries heal really quickly, and Vlad reckons we might be immortal, though he doesn't know that I know that he thinks that. I can grow back my arms and legs, or my internal organs. I can have my head cut off and it'll reattach just fine. Just don't touch my core, since I think that's a lot harder to fix.

"I bleed both blood and ectoplasm at the same time, and they don't mix together. There's a fancy name for that, immiscible or something? Anyway, everything about me glows. In the daytime it's difficult to see, but my spit, my tears, _everything._ Even my skin glows really faintly in my human form, but it's impossible to see unless it's pretty much pitch black in the middle of the night with no moon. When I get angry or upset or embarrassed or anything, my eyes and freckles glow really brightly. I go flying every day, even if ghosts aren't attacking, because it helps burn up excess energy and clear my head. I know what everyone around me is feeling at any given time. I have super hearing, super strength, pretty much super everything. Sometimes I have problems learning new powers, and they can manifest at awkward or even dangerous times.

"I don't sleep well, and so I'm too tired to both hunt ghosts and pay attention in school, so that's why my grades are so bad. One time, everyone died and I turned evil, but I fixed it with time travel and now I'm trying really hard every day to be as good as possible and to not use my powers for selfish reasons, because I'm never going to turn evil, _ever._

"I hate it whenever you guys come up with new weapons because they're really painful and I have to either destroy them or modify them so they won't target me anymore. The Guys in White recently shot me with a dart that went so deep it scratched my core. I haven't been able to teleport accurately since, and I don't think it's ever going to heal. Vlad's trying to find a way to fix it, but I don't know if he can."

Danny stopped, chest heaving and feeling lighter than he ever had. It was done. He'd told her.

Maddie was quiet, but he could hear her shaky breathing.

Everything that he'd said suddenly registered, and the guilt hit him so hard that for a moment the ghost boy couldn't even draw breath. His mother would tear herself apart over this. How could he have dumped it all on her at once?!

"Um, I also really like those ectocookies you make to try to lure ghosts into your traps," he added, trying to finish on a bit of a positive spin. "Maybe some ectobrownies would be good as well. We could cook them together!"

She remained silent, and Danny floundered. "Ah, um, some of your weapons are really useful, y'know! I never would've handled hunting back when I was first starting out if it weren't for the Thermos. Man, I would've been toast!

"And I'm perfectly safe being around town late at night, because I've got powers that can get me out of pretty much any trouble. Dash's bullying hasn't even left serious bruises for the past few years!

"And… and… uh…"

"Danny."

"Hm?" She sounded so sad. Sad and far away.

"Stay with Vlad for now," she said. "You're safer there, and he can work on fixing your core."

"So… I'm not grounded?"

"Just take care of yourself," Maddie told him. "Your father and I will drive down to Wisconsin tomorrow."

"Okay…"

Danny frowned when she didn't talk again. "Mum?"

"Yes, Sweetie?"

He took a deep breath that shuddered like a car with the idle set too low. "I love you."

Her sigh sent another burst of static through the earpiece. "I love you, too, Danny. Now go and get your foot fixed and get some sleep."

"Will you bring ectocookies?"

He could practically hear her smile, could see the corners of her mouth curve upwards ever so slightly in his mind's eye. "Of course I will."

Danny smiled as well, his split lip reopening with the stretch. "'Night, Mum."

"Good night," she said, and Danny kept the phone against his ear until he heard her hang up.

It took several moments before he could bring himself to re-join the halfa in the kitchen. "Hey, Vlad," Danny started as he phased through the wall.

"Yes?"

Danny glared half-heartedly at the man who sipped from a steaming teacup. Trust the guy with the electric core to drink something hot when the weather was so uncomfortably warm outside. "Why'd you try to kill my dad? Didn't that clue my parents into the fact that you went a bit nuts back then, if they already knew you were a halfa?"

"Your mother had some suspicions, but your father isn't so bright," Vlad said. "For almost twenty years, I set myself up, finding a place in the world. I had no family, and your parents got married and started their own lives together. I felt like I was an intruder. So, I decided to get a job. To learn what I could. To start a business."

Danny placed the phone on the bench, scowling. "I thought you said you were quarantined."

"Not exactly," Vlad responded. "I was isolated, certainly. I worked hard. I didn't have friends I could constantly turn to like you. Slowly, as I became more and more successful, my powers began to change me. I was a lonely creature, Badger, and with every passing year I felt an increasing yearning for the friendship that I had shared with your parents when we were younger.

"Ghost powers can consume a weak mind. My defences were down. I was alone, depressed… I convinced myself that everything was your father's fault. That he had stolen the life that was supposed to be mine.

"And then, just as I was about to surrender entirely to my revenge, _just_ as I was going to exact my revenge on one of the only people who actually cared about me, I met another halfa."

Danny stared at Vlad. "Me?" he asked, floating up to sit back on the bench. "What did _I_ ever do?"

"You were the exact opposite of me," Vlad explained. "I was so lonely, and I'd… Daniel, I'd stopped ageing. We're immortal." He looked at Danny with sympathy, as though breaking solemn news.

"Yeah, I know," Danny said. "What's your point?"

Vlad blinked, opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, and then sighed. His shoulders drooped. "Oh."

"So, what was so great about me?" Danny pressed when Vlad didn't immediately continue his explanation.

The elder man rubbed a hand across his face before speaking once again, and Danny realised just how late it must be. Three in the morning, four? It was the middle of the week. Even though the billionaire had work tomorrow, he had been waiting for Danny to turn up.

"I… wanted you," Vlad said. "You were the only creature like me. I wanted you more than anything else in the universe. My powers, my wealth… it all paled in comparison to the companionship of another halfa. I was no longer alone.

"So I tried to win you over. And, eventually, as I tried to keep you, I began to change. Because if I didn't change, if I didn't become your friend, you would never stick around."

It should have sounded creepy. Manipulative. Danny knew he should be upset.

But he understood what Vlad was trying to say.

"I want you, too," he confessed, twisting his fingers together nervously. "Ever since we met, I've wanted to learn from you, to work with you. We're the only two of our kind. Sam and Tucker try, like they try _really hard_ , but they just don't get it. They don't know…"

_You're the only one who could understand._

Vlad inclined his head. "Exactly, Badger."

Danny ran a hand through his hair. "Fruitloop," he grumbled good-naturedly. "So, what're the drinks for?"

Vlad motioned for Danny to hop off the bench. Once the boy was floating above the tiles again, he passed Danny the tray of beverages. "Hold them level," Vlad instructed. "I will teleport the two of us."

"Teleport us where?" Danny asked, carefully holding the tray so that the assorted drinks stayed upright.

Crackling energy swept over Vlad's form, and Plasmius smirked. "Surely you've noticed the campers in the field next door," he said.

Danny tensed, fingers tightening around the beautifully moulded handles of Vlad's silver tray. "The Guys in White that are there?"

Vlad placed a hand on Danny's shoulder. "They have been watching me intermittently for over two decades," he reminded the boy. "They wouldn't dare try anything."

"But why are we taking them _drinks?_ " Danny spat, trying to quell his trembling.

"To assert your confidence," Vlad reminded him. "Show them that you're not one to meddle with."

"Right," Danny mumbled, "confidence."

Vlad's other hand rested on the boy's hip. "Human or ghost form, it is your choice."

Danny frowned, recalling his reflection in the window over the sink. "Human," he decided. "It's far more terrifying to see plain Danny Fenton with glowing eyes and freckles than it is on Phantom." With this statement, he fed a constant stream of energy into maintaining this precise appearance.

Vlad's chest rumbled with laughter, and before Danny could ask what was so funny, heat closed around them and they were out under the clouds. There was a moment of still silence as Danny blinked his eyes, adjusting to the dimmer lighting, for there certainly was light here in the dank night-time.

The two halfas floated in the middle of a semicircle of tents lit by electric camping lanterns. Scattered around the small area were camp chairs and tables, various gear ranging from muddy boots to dented ectoguns, and several very surprised men dressed in that immaculate, impractical white.

One of the men scooted backwards, falling out of his chair with a shriek and losing those dark glasses in the process. He fumbled with an ectogun, dropping it in the dirt in his panic. Danny directed his glowing gaze at the agent, hoping that his supernatural glare was intimidating enough. "Don't even think about it," he warned.

The man left his gun in the dirt, holding up hands that shook.

The other two agents barely stirred from their seats.

"New to this, are you?" Danny asked, noting the youth of the man now that his shades had been lost. "Your buddies don't seem too surprised."

"Plasmius," one of the seated agents greeted. Vlad didn't move. "Phantom."

"Good evening," Danny responded as coldly as he could, trickling the smallest amount of energy into his voice so that it echoed somewhere just inside the range of natural hearing. "Would any of you gentlemen care for a drink?"

The agents visibly shivered, and Danny felt Vlad's amusement as clearly as if it were his own.

The agent who had greeted the two halfas stood, dusting off his gloves. "According to policy, the acceptance of bribes or other services from the enemy is prohibited."

Danny shrugged to the best of his ability whilst keeping the tray upright. "Alright then," he said, tossing his head. "Let's go, Vlad."

A gloved hand snatched the mug of coffee from the tray. "Of course, there is nothing in any policy prohibiting us from accepting the hospitality of our hosts."

The other agent also stood, motioning to the third with his butt still planted firmly in the dirt. "Go and get the others," he ordered before claiming the tumbler of amber liquid.

The younger agent squeaked something affirmative, and as he scuttled into one of the tents lit from within Danny realised that they were probably about the same age. That in itself wasn't unusual – young people fresh out of high school trained with organisations such as the Guys in White, studying as a component of their employment and thus earning double degrees in engineering and paranormal science. It was a brutally difficult program, and Danny had always wondered if he would have eventually followed the same career path had he not become half ghost. Sure, he wanted to be an astronaut, but engineering and spectral science had always been his fall-backs. Of course, as always, the portal had changed things.

It was almost as though Danny could measure his entire existence by _before_ and _after_ turning on that portal.

Voices murmured from within the tent, and three people emerged, followed by the young guy.

"There are a lot of you here tonight," Danny commented, relieved that Vlad had prepared the correct amount of drinks. "Were you expecting some sort of show?"

There was a faint undertone of malice to his own words that surprised Danny. What did he think he was _doing?_ He wasn't Vlad, he couldn't intimidate these powerful people, and how did serving them drinks solve anything anyway?!

Vlad's reassuring presence was the only thing that kept Danny from fleeing.

The same agent that had spoken earlier answered again, and Danny wondered if he was the leader of this unusual group. "We were informed of your earlier escapades in Amity Park."

"So that's it?" Danny asked when the agent didn't elaborate. He could see the reflection of his glowing eyes and freckles in the agents' dark glasses, their colour growing stronger and brighter as his frustration mounted. "You guys were the ones who blasted me, and yet I'm still considered the bad guy here?"

Vlad remained firm and still, a wall of support against Danny's back. In those dark glasses, red eyes were suddenly reflected along with Danny's green.

That sight was all the support that Danny needed to finish this charade of confidence as strongly as he possibly could. "I'm only going to say this once," the ghost boy hissed, feeling power rush through his veins and set his hair alight. He knew he looked terrifying, knew that with every word he spoke that all who heard him were touched by whispers of the Ghost Zone that sent chills down their spines and set every hair on end. "Leave. Me. Alone.

"I'm not like those ghosts you pull from the Ghost Zone and tear apart. If you so much as try, I'll rip you all to pieces."

Their fear stained the air around them, weighing down the atmosphere even more than the humidity. Danny dropped the tray on one of the empty seats, allowing his glowing to die down again to a dull luminescence. The agents flinched as one, shrinking back at his movements.

"Well done," Vlad murmured in a pitch so low that only Danny heard him. The elder halfa then lifted a hand, pointing it directly at one of the men that had emerged from the tent. This man had a white cross embroidered on his white shirt, and he was the only man who hadn't been wearing sunglasses at all. "You," Vlad demanded. "You're a doctor, right?"

The man shook his head rapidly, eyes wide and forehead slick with sweat. "No, please, I'm just qualified in first aid for the field."

"You are familiar with your facility's private hospital."

The man quailed beneath Vlad's crimson gaze. "Y-yes," he stammered, edging towards his companions and away from both halfas.

"Good," Vlad responded, grasping Danny's arm with one hand and the first aid agent's with the other. "Be a good man and concentrate on the main reception of that hospital," he instructed.

"What?!" The agent wrenched himself out of Vlad's grasp, earning a growl from the elder halfa.

"Daniel's ankle was broken during your colleagues' unprovoked attack to his person," Vlad said. His voice was calm, low, and very dangerous, like a predatory cat crouched and ready to pounce. "If it isn't treated within the next few hours, it will begin to fuse incorrectly, and cause further complications. I will provide the teleportation, but I require your mind guide us to the correct location since neither Daniel nor I have been there before."

The man took another step backwards, his head never ceasing in its shaking. "No, I won't have you use your powers on me!" he shouted.

One by one, the others began to move back as well.

"You cannot expect us to allow you to teleport one of our own," the leader insisted.

Danny took a deep breath through his nose in an attempt to contain his frustration. "If we wanted to hurt you, we would have already done it," he snapped.

The agents shook their heads, pressing back into a tight group and Danny and Vlad floated in front of them.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," the youngest whitesuit grumbled, pushing past his superiors and placing his still-trembling hand in Vlad's, "it's not like teleporting once or twice'll hurt us. I know the hospital, so let's go."

Danny barely caught the horrified looks on the campers' faces before all three of them were enveloped in light.

The first thing he noticed about the Guys in White's hospital was how ridiculously clean it smelled. To Danny's superhuman senses, the place was blindingly white and nerve-wrackingly sterile.

They were in the middle of the main reception area, and Danny pulled away from Vlad, sinking into one of the chairs. His short assertion of power had certainly seemed effective, but his exhausted core trembled with the effort of maintaining such a powerful presence for those few minutes.

"The desk isn't manned at this hour," the young agent informed Vlad whilst staring at Danny. "You have to go and press the intercom button on the wall and talk to one of the doctors on duty."

Vlad moved wordlessly in the direction indicated, and Danny waved a hand in the whitesuit's general direction. "Thanks for that," he said. "I hope you didn't lose your job just then."

"So do I," the young man responded, and Danny realised under the better lighting that he recognised this guy.

"You're David, Dash's brother," he said.

"And you're Jazmine's."

Somewhere to their right, Vlad began to talk into the white noise of the raspy intercom.

Danny nodded as the young man who had battled constantly with Jazz for top of their year level all though high school sat in the seat next to him. In the end, Jazz had won dux of the school by a mere two percent.

"Well, if you lose your job, you can always come and work for my parents," Danny offered. "If I recommend you, they'll certainly hire and train you. Jazz'll recommend you as well."

"I'll keep that in mind," David said, his mouth curving in a small smile. "Anyway, why aren't you glowing anymore?"

Danny waved his hand again as though batting away the comment like an irritating insect. "That was all for show," he confessed. "I just wanted to look scary so your workmates would get my message though their thick skulls."

David sighed. "I thought as much," he said as Vlad returned to them.

"A doctor will examine your foot in ten minutes," he informed Danny.

"Good," Danny grumbled, leaning back in the seat and stretching his arms above his head with a groan. "I'm really tired."

"I think we all are," David sighed.

Vlad raised an eyebrow, and Jazz's long-time rival shrank back in his seat. "U-um, th-thanks for not vaporising me, Plasmius," he stammered, "but d'you think you could teleport me back now?"

Vlad shook his head. "I will not leave Daniel here alone."

Danny rolled his eyes with another long, exaggerated groan. "Go on, it'll take you, like, ten seconds."

Vlad's eyes burned. "Very well," he said, taking David's arm in his grasp. The two of them were gone in a flash of light, and a heartbeat later Vlad reappeared in a second flare, sans the agent.

He stood at Danny's side, hand clasped on the ghost boy's shoulder as they waited for the doctor to arrive.

"Do you think they'll try to attack us?"

Vlad made a noise that suggested disagreement. "They would not risk our anger," he explained.

"Oh." Danny wriggled in his chair. "How long will this take?"

"A few hours," Vlad mused. "They'll need an x-ray, and then they'll most likely have to operate."

"Operate?!" Danny exclaimed, rising out of his seat to float at Vlad's eye level. "Why couldn't they just set it in a cast?"

"Breakages in the ankle and foot as bad as yours often require the insertion of pins or plates to hold things together," Vlad explained. "Once the damage has healed, you have the added advantage of your ectoplasm slowly breaking down and absorbing these additions, so you will not have to live forever with metal in your foot like humans who undergo this procedure often do. You can even be conscious for the procedure, since local anaesthetic will be sufficient instead of general an-"

"No," Danny interrupted. "If I'm gunna let them cut me open, I need to be asleep for it. You can guard me and make sure they don't do anything else, but if I'm still awake when those guys start to slice my foot apart, I can't promise that I won't blast them into next week."

Vlad chuckled, mussing Danny's hair fondly. "Of course," he responded.

Danny pulled away, pushing his hair back into place with a mock scowl. After a moment, he cleared his throat. "Uh, thanks for helping me tonight," he said, twisting his fingers around each other.

"You're always welcome."

They both smiled, and Danny linked his hands behind his back. "And sorry about keeping you up so late. You're gunna miss work tomorrow thanks to all this."

Vlad shrugged. "One day, I hope that you'll realise just how important you are to me, Badger. No matter what I was doing, if you called, I would be there for you."

Danny ducked his head, feeling heat spread across his cheeks and down his neck. "Isn't that what parents are supposed to do?" he asked.

"I may not be your father," Vlad said, "but I'll certainly be around much longer than he could ever wish to live. I hope in time that you will accept me as your guardian and mentor. Until you do, I shall continue to watch over and help you, as I have been doing for the past while."

Danny turned away from Vlad, facing the door to the rest of the hospital in an attempt to hide his embarrassment. "What if I said that I already sort of see you as a mentor, so long as you don't try to replace my dad?"

The elder halfa's hands closed over his shoulders in a gentle grasp that conveyed something that their words were currently failing to.

"Then I would be the happiest man on Earth," Vlad said.

Danny smiled, placing his own hands over his friend's as they floated there, waiting together in that quiet room.


End file.
